A local kid will be on the big stage tonight as TCU plays defending national champion Georgia for college football's national championship.
Namdi Obiazor is a junior safety for the Horned Frogs. He played his high school football at Eden Prairie, but his father, Tony, says he got very little interest from college scouts coming out of school.
“In his senior year he didn't get that many offers because he was like 5’10”, 5’9”, so he went to Iowa Western, and he grew and then offers started coming from all the schools,” Obiazor told Vineeta Sawkar on the WCCO Morning News.
He ended up choosing TCU which has surprised a lot of people this season. TCU were coming off a disappointing 5-7 season and had fired longtime coach Gary Patterson (who was briefly replaced by former Minnesota coach Jerry Kill). Sonny Dykes took over in 2022, and the team took off, winning the Big 12 regular season title, and losing only once in the Big 12 Championship game. Despite that loss, they snuck into the college football playoffs and knocked off favored Michigan in the semifinals.
Now it is on to Georgia, SEC powerhouse and defending national champion. While this may be a “David vs. Goliath” type of matchup, Obiazor says they shouldn’t be intimidated by the bigger, and favored, school.
“I told him, I remember you guys beat the Oklahoma and you guys beat the Texas, you know, which are two big schools,” says Obiazor. “So just go there and do the same, very clean, and see what happens.”
Obiazor says they’ll have a number of people at the game in Los Angeles Monday night which starts at 6:30 on ESPN. The Georgia Bulldogs are 13-point favorites.
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